Science and Technics

Inheritors of the Earth: How Nature Is Thriving in an Age of Extinction

by Chris D. Thomas

Human activity has irreversibly changed the natural environment. But the news isn't all bad.

It's accepted wisdom today that human beings have permanently damaged the natural world, causing extinction, deforestation,...

Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity

by Carlo Rovelli, Simon Carnell & Erica Segre

“The man who makes physics sexy . . . the scientist they’re calling the next Stephen Hawking.” —The Times Magazine

From the New York Times–bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, a closer...

The Wood for the Trees: One Man's Long View of Nature

by Richard Fortey

From the author of Earth: An Intimate History, an exuberant "biography" of four acres of woodland, evoking a cosmos of living and inanimate things and imagining its millennia of existence

A few years ago, award-winning...

Other Minds

by Peter Godfrey-Smith

Although mammals and birds are widely regarded as the smartest creatures on earth, it has lately become clear that a very distant branch of the tree of life has also sprouted higher intelligence: the cephalopods,...

Time Travel: A History

by James Gleick

Best Books of 2016

BOSTON GLOBE * THE ATLANTIC

From the acclaimed bestselling author of The Information and Chaos comes this enthralling history of time travel—a concept that has preoccupied physicists and...

Half-Earth: Our Planet's Fight for Life

by Edward O. Wilson

Half-Earth proposes an achievable plan to save our imperiled biosphere: devote half the surface of the Earth to nature.

In order to stave off the mass extinction of species, including our own, we must move swiftly...

The Tides of Mind: Uncovering the Spectrum of Consciousness

by David Gelernter

A “rock star” (New York Times) of the computing world provides a radical new work on the meaning of human consciousness.

The holy grail of psychologists and scientists for nearly a century has been to understand...

The Invention of Science

by David Wootton

A companion to such acclaimed works as The Age of Wonder, A Clockwork Universe, and Darwin’s Ghosts—a groundbreaking examination of the greatest event in history, the Scientific Revolution, and how it came...

Spooky Action at a Distance

by George Musser

Long-listed for the 2016 PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award

“An important book that provides insight into key new developments in our understanding of the nature of space, time and the universe....

Changing the Subject

by Sven Birkerts

Trenchant, expansive essays on the cultural consequences of ongoing, all-permeating technological innovation

In 1994, Sven Birkerts published The Gutenberg Elegies, his celebrated rallying cry to resist the oncoming...

Do No Harm

by Henry Marsh

A New York Times Bestseller

Shortlisted for both the Guardian First Book Prize and the Costa Book Award

Longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction

A Finalist for the Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize

A Finalist...

A Buzz in the Meadow

by Dave Goulson

A CONSERVATIONIST'S DEEPLY PERSONAL AND FASCINATING REFLECTION ON OWNING AND REVITALIZING A FARM IN RURAL FRANCE

A Sting in the Tale, Dave Goulson's account of a lifetime studying bees, was a powerful call to...

To Explain the World

by Steven Weinberg

A masterful commentary on the history of science from the Greeks to modern times, by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg—a thought-provoking and important book by one of the most distinguished scientists...

The Human Age: The World Shaped By Us

by Diane Ackerman

Winner of the 2015 National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History Literature and the 2015 PEN New England Henry David Thoreau Prize.

A dazzling, inspiring tour through the ways that humans are working with...

The Meaning of Human Existence

by Edward O. Wilson

National Book Award Finalist. How did humanity originate and why does a species like ours exist on this planet? Do we have a special place, even a destiny in the universe? Where are we going, and perhaps, the...

The Reef: A Passionate History: The Great Barrier Reef from Captain Cook to Climate Change

by Iain McCalman

Stretching 1,400 miles along the Australian coast and visible from space, the Great Barrier Reef is home to three thousand individual reefs, more than nine hundred islands, and thousands of marine species, and...

A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History

by Nicholas Wade

Drawing on startling new evidence from the mapping of the genome, an explosive new account of the genetic basis of race and its role in the human story

Fewer ideas have been more toxic or harmful than the...

A Sting in the Tale

by Dave Goulson

FOLLOWING IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF GREAT NATURE WRITERS SUCH AS E.O. WILSON AND CHARMING MEMOIRS LIKE GERALD DURRELL'S MY FAMILY AND OTHER ANIMALS, THIS FASCINATING BOOK WILL ALTER THE WAY WE THINK ABOUT BUMBLEBEES....

Five Billion Years of Solitude: The Search for Life Among the Stars

by Lee Billings

“A definitive guide to astronomy’s hottest field.” —The Economist

Since its formation nearly five billion years ago, our planet has been the sole living world in a vast and silent universe. But over...

Smarter Than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better

by Clive Thompson

A revelatory and timely look at how technology boosts our cognitive abilities—making us smarter, more productive, and more creative than ever

It’s undeniable—technology is changing the way we think. But...